Immigration

Out with the new

Why attitudes to immigration are hardening

THE British like to think of themselves as rather enlightened when it comes to immigration and race relations. Disputes over headscarves are left to the French. Ghettos, frank discrimination and the nasty notion that Britishness is a white characteristic endure only in coal-stained northern towns, which are stuck in the past in more ways than this. Everywhere else, a multicultural consensus reigns.

It's a view that is becoming hard to sustain. A YouGov poll for The Economist this week finds that 74% of people believe too many immigrants are coming into the country. Londoners, young people and the middle classes can normally be counted on to hold more liberal views, but not, it seems, when it comes to immigration. Their sentiments are virtually identical.

Most damaging for Britain's enlightened self-image, the nation has risen to the top of the European xenophobes' league. A Eurobarometer poll earlier this year found that 41% saw immigration as one of the two biggest problems faced by the nation—16 points more than in any other European country. Forget unemployment, terrorism or crime: the real threat comes from the man with the battered suitcase.

Why the hard feelings? It's a puzzle, especially given the benefits brought by new arrivals. Immigrants may depress wages in the bus-driving and vegetable-picking industries, but they are only good news for urban middle-class folk, who benefit from cheaper (and more interesting) restaurant food and plentiful nursing. Even reproduction is easier, thanks to foreign nannies. “A generation of London kids is being raised with Warsaw-accented English,” points out Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality.

The Economist's poll suggests an answer. The natives are not particularly restless about newcomers who come explicitly to work. Just 7% of those who reckon there are too many immigrants blame the number of employment permits handed out. Four-fifths believe the country needs more skilled workers, and two-fifths even think it needs more grunts.

The newcomers that grate are those who strain the delicate British sense of fair play: 85% cite either asylum seekers or illegal immigrants as the main reason the country is being overrun. They are thought to be bad news not because they take jobs or commit crimes, but because they compete unfairly for public services. Jumping the queue is always intolerable, whether it is for housing or at supermarket tills.

Hostility to those who do not come openly to work is not new. Even in 2000, before the asylum panic, just 12% believed that genuine refugees should be accepted unreservedly—the lowest number in Europe. But Britons are more blasé than other Europeans about the effect of immigration on national harmony. Of those who reckon there are too many, only a quarter worry about racial balance. “Britain has become a multicultural society; it just doesn't want any more people to come in,” says John Solomos, who follows the subject at City University in London.

What seems to have happened over the past few years is that immigration has become associated with refugees and illegal entrants rather than with migrant workers. That is not surprising, given the rise in asylum claimants that began in the late 1990s. Numbers are down, but it does not matter: perceptions have shifted.

A curious side-effect of this change is that the nation's mental image of the immigrant has taken on a different hue. “We traditionally thought of immigrants as black and brown, and for 40 years they were,” says Mr Phillips. Unlike America, where ethnic minorities and immigrants have always been viewed as two different things, Britons regarded them as one and the same. Now their attention has been drawn to paler arrivals who are often more disliked. Romanians, who are often accused of living off the state, are less popular than West Indians. Iraqis, who are not just refugees but also come from a country where our boys are dying, are more loathed than either. Pakistanis (a well-established but growing group) are disliked, too, probably because of fears of domestic terrorism and memories of riots in 2001.

The fact that immigration has less to do with race only makes it easier to dislike. Hostility used to connote racial prejudice, but no longer. That's modern Britain: multicultural, racially liberal and anti-immigrant to the core.